Small_World_WID18_9281

Heather Pelzel, assistant professor in the Department of Biological Science at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, along with instructors from eight UW System schools and more than a dozen other colleges and universities take part in a Small World Initiative (SWI) workshop inside the Discover Lab at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discover (WID) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Jan. 9, 2018. Founded by WID director Jo Handelsman, the SWI is an educational, crowdsourced search for new antibiotics. The workshop provides the student instructors experience in real-world laboratory techniques while they search for soil-dwelling bacteria that might produce the next antibiotic. The student instructors will return to their institutions to become active partners in the program by adding the curriculum to their introductory biology courses. (Photo by Bryce Richter / UW-Madison)